Thirty-five years ago it was one of the Houston area's most desirable destinations, offering spacious houses, good public schools and freedom from the noise and crowds of urban life.
But age has not been kind to the FM 1960 corridor in northwest Harris County, where vacant strip centers and declining home prices are among concerns that have prompted a community group to organize a revitalization campaign.
The problems affecting Houston's aging suburban communities drew the attention of a panel of national experts from the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit real estate organization, who studied the Houston region's unique growth patterns earlier this year.
In a report being presented today, the experts call on local leaders to use transportation funds to guide growth into compact, interconnected urban centers, rather than isolated subdivisions sprawling across the region's dwindling open spaces.
The Houston-Galveston Area Council, which allocates billions of dollars in federal transportation funds, should support projects that reflect the vision supported by almost all local leaders the authors interviewed during their Houston visit in February, the report says.
This vision includes connecting growth centers through roads, rails and trail; promoting walkable neighborhoods where people live close to where they work and shop; and encouraging voluntary, market-based standards for high-quality developments.
The FM 1960 corridor, in contrast, reflects what happens when developers throw up subdivisions wherever they can make a deal to buy land served by a county road, said Roger Galatas, the chief executive of a real estate consulting business. Galatas is also a board member of the nonprofit Center for Houston's Future, which commissioned the Urban Land Institute report.
The area's design, common to many American suburbs, is characterized by residential neighborhoods full of dead-end streets and cul-de-sacs to discourage cut-through traffic, forcing residents to use the adjacent thoroughfare even for short trips to a shop or a restaurant.
"At one time, that was the place to move to," Galatas said. "But as more developments occurred that were not connected to each other, they built rather ugly retail centers that took advantage of the traffic and created more traffic. People started moving away, and you've got declining home values, empty retail centers and a declining tax base. The only thing still functioning is a very wide strip of concrete called FM 1960."
. . .In addition, rising gasoline prices and growing frustration with long commutes to distant jobs is leading more developers and builders to realize that a different approach would benefit their bottom line as well as community needs, leaders of the effort said.
"I think we are beginning to see enlightened self-interest take hold in the business community," said Jason L. Stuart, executive director of the ULI's Houston chapter, in a meeting Wednesday with the Houston Chronicle editorial board.
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said he sees some merit in the idea of using transportation funding to guide growth. But some decisions will always have to be reactive rather than proactive, since people decide where to live based on school quality and other factors besides just transportation, Emmett said.
Joshua Sanders, executive director of Houstonians for Responsible Growth, a real estate group formed last year to limit local regulations on development, said the Houston region's traditional approach has worked well.
"We believe that the market should determine growth with government supporting consumer demand — not the other way around," Sanders said.
The ULI report is sprinkled with favorable references to the Houston area's low cost of living and its traditional preference for market-based rather than government-imposed solutions to land-use problems.
But this approach, the authors say, has limits, and Houston's leaders can't assume that the economic conditions so favorable to its energy-based economy now will continue indefinitely.
Once again, it seems like a leading factor in a change in mentality is the pocketbook, specifically the cost of a gallon of gasoline.
